1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of displaying, a method of processing, an apparatus for processing, and a system for processing multimedia information with high usability in which a user can easily search a large amount of various multimedia information for desired information to select the information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in the field of television broadcast technology, the communication satellite broadcast has been developed, and it is about to start the digitization of the broadcasting satellite broadcast and the ground wave broadcast.
Namely, a large volume of various contents and various information items are going to be transmitted via broadcast media or through communications to families.
In the following description, contents and various information are collectively referred to as contents, which also applies to the claim.
Additionally, in the field of technology of personal computers (to be referred to as PC herebelow), the network configuration has been developed, and it is possible to retrieve information of the world via, for example, world wide web (WWW) using the Internet.
Although the televisions (TV) and the personal computers have been used by different users for different purposes, it is expected that the televisions or personal computers function as windows of information in the future. In this situation, the televisions and personal computers are assumed to come together into a combined form.
There has been proposed a technology of the prior art to handle a large amount of various contents, namely, a service of television broadcasting in which there is disposed a storage for several hours of video. Information changed at a broadcast of the news, weather forecast, or the like is automatically updated to the latest information so that the user can view the information at any time.
Additionally, as interfaces to select a large volume of various contents, there has been proposed, for example, a technology using characters called icons as contents information which is used to display a program list, to display a menu as a table of contents, and to display details of contents to present contents stored.
Characters such as icons are referred to as contents information herebelow, which also applies to the claim.
The televisions are combined with the personal computers as described above and hence a large amount of various contents are transmitted to the user. However, it is expectedly quite difficult for the user to select desired information from such a large volume of various contents.
The technology of the prior art regarding the interfaces above provides the display of a program list, a menu as a list of contents, and contents by contents information (icons). When the amount of contents increases, the menu or the like is required to be hierarchically configured to display all contents information. This leads to a problem that it is quite difficult for the user to select desired information from the contents information.
Furthermore, a car information system such as a car navigation system or an intelligent transport system is being installed for cars, and various information such as road guide information, traffic information, and information of amusement facilities is introduced to the car information systems. These system is also attended with a problem similar to the problem above.